Call for papers Ciudades 30 (2027): Historic centres: still a relevant issue?

Ciudades 30 (2027) will dedicate its monographic section, coordinated by Beatriz Fernández Águeda (beatriz.fernandez@ehess.fr) and María A. Castrillo Romón (maria.castrillo.romon@uva.es), to the topic "Historic centres: still a relevant issue?". The deadline for receiving contributions for both the monographic section and the miscellaneous and final sections will remain open until 30 September 2026.

Below you will find a summary of the call. You can find the full text in the Call for papers section.

Ciudades 30 (2027): “Historic centres: still a relevant issue?”

This call for papers aims to contribute to building a current vision of historic centres and re-examining their problems from the perspective of the intrinsic complexity of urban processes, transcending both commonplaces and the analysis of isolated processes and sectoral developments. The challenge is to understand how these processes change historic centres, either at the same time or at different times.

The call for papers focuses on three areas of research, without ruling out other topics or perspectives that may be related or of interest and that offer a global vision of city centres: 1) Disciplinary construction of the ‘historic centre’, on the origins, evolution and stages, circulation, national specificities or intermittencies of the ‘question of historic centres’; 2) The working classes in historic centres, from a comparative perspective on the social evolution of historic centres; 3) Is this still a relevant issue? What issue? This call for papers also raises the relevance of the ‘question of historic centres’ and the possibility of a more or less implicit reformulation of this question in urban planning.